


your telescope eyes

by wolfinglet



Category: Marvel (Movies)
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-05
Updated: 2013-05-05
Packaged: 2017-12-10 10:51:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/785228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolfinglet/pseuds/wolfinglet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maya Hansen has a girlfriend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	your telescope eyes

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Brooke Fraser's "Deciphering Me," which is totally the theme song for this fic.

Maya Hansen has a girlfriend.

It isn't the girl from her second year at MIT. That girl took her to the basement of the physics building and they fucked right there, on the cold concrete floor. There was a prototype particle accelerator down there, and Maya looked up at the shadows it cast on the ceiling while the girl -- her name was Heather -- ate her out, her expert tongue on Maya's clit and her clumsy fingers seeking out Maya's g-spot. She never found it, but Maya came anyway, and almost fell asleep. She was that type, prone to drop right over after a hard orgasm, and Heather made her come harder than anyone else.

After, Heather shook her awake and they went up onto the roof, dragging a $4 million telescope behind them so they could find Saturn. Heather pointed out the rings, counting them, rattling off endless facts. She was the smartest woman that Maya had ever spoken to, and Maya wanted her again, right there on the roof, but Heather wasn't that type of girl, she said. What they had was fun. A distraction. It was good, but it was tonight.

***

Maya Hansen has a girlfriend.

Maya is lying on the cold concrete floor of her dungeon -- oh, Tony, so apt as always, digging the bullshit out of everything -- and she is bleeding from the chest. No part of the human body is a mystery to her; she knows exactly what this bullet is doing to her. Her body will spasm and shut down. It will shake out the death and then leave her lifeless after all the pain.

Cinematic deaths are quick. In reality, Maya knows she is going to lie here for hours, dizzy with pain. It will hurt to breathe. It will hurt to speak. It will hurt to feel her heart beat, and it will hurt to feel her heart slow to nothing.

***

Maya Hansen has a girlfriend. Her name is Jasmine and she thinks Maya works for their local university. She thinks Maya lives in Tennessee and that she goes on long business trips. She's expecting Maya home for Christmas this year, to meet her parents.

They would have spent the night on the couch, maybe, sharing a bottle of wine and watching _The Family Stone_ and mourning the finishing of the chocolate cake that Jaz's brother sent them from Boston. Maya doesn't live with her, but she spends all her free time in Jaz's apartment, lying with her head in her lap and watching mindless TV, and not thinking about Aldrich Killian.

Maya isn't going to be there.

***

Maya Hansen has a girlfriend. They met in a coffee shop in SoHo. Jaz ruined Maya's shirt. Maya remembers the coffee all over the floor, stepping over it to help Jaz up, and when she touched Jaz's hand there was a jolt, a biological jump that felt, somewhere in her stomach, like the first time she watched Extremis breathe.

"Hi," Jaz said, and Maya wanted to say, _Let's fuck. Right here._

Instead, she did the responsible thing: paid for Jaz's coffee. Bought one for herself. Sat across from Jaz and struck up conversation.

It was a ten-minute walk to Maya's apartment.

They made it in six.

***

Maya Hansen has a girlfriend. They haven't seen each other in five weeks. Maya called three days ago to apologize, again, and to say that something new has come up -- that something being Tony Stark, but she didn't say that -- and she would be home for Christmas.

She promised.

***

Maya Hansen has a girlfriend. But there, sitting in the hotel bed with Pepper Potts, she wished she didn't.

Pepper had booked the room under false names. Susan Buillon and Katy Denning. One bed. Maya looked at Pepper when she said that, because why? Pepper had a black Amex with Susan Buillon's name on it. She could buy anything in the world with that card. Looking at Pepper, there, standing ramrod-straight with her chin up and her fatigue tucked away in the back of her pretty eyes, Maya felt like Pepper could buy the country. The world. Who would need the president anymore? Not Killian.

This was the woman he needed to get what he wanted.

Maya bit through her lip when she made the phone call. After, in the room, Pepper cleaned her cuts, that one included, and tsked over them, apologizing. She didn't actually apologize a lot, Maya realized. Tony had always been the one that apologies needed to be pried out of, whether by one person or by the Secretary of Defense, but Pepper...

Pepper...

Pepper was not who Maya thought she was.

Pepper ordered Maya food. The hotel was gorgeous, their room was white and cream and beige, and Maya ate the food that rich people do. It had inexplicable sprigs of strong-smelling herbs. Pepper seemed too busy or too nervous to eat. She was aimless, wandering -- rudderless without Tony, Maya assumed, until Pepper said, "I'm going after him."

"After Tony?" Maya glanced up, surprised.

"He needs me," Pepper said. Maya knew it was true. Tony Stark needed Pepper Potts in his life like he needed blood. Like he needed his heart to keep pumping. He had only worked at two things in his lifetime: at getting Pepper Potts, and at his Lone Ranger crusade to save the world.

Aldrich was on his way.

Maya said, "Maybe you should go."

Pepper exhaled, weary. Maya patted the bed, beckoning her closer. Pepper dipped when she sat, leaning slightly forward, and Maya opened her mouth without thinking, instinct waiting for a kiss. None came, of course, and Pepper sat, graceful with her hair spilling down around her shoulders. She was the reason Tony Stark was different.

She was the reason Tony Stark remembered Maya's name.

"I need him," Pepper said, much lower. Not conspiratorial, but solemn. "He's all I have."

"He loves you," Maya said. "I've never seen him look at someone like he looks at you." She offered her plate to Pepper; there was half of her omelet left. She didn't offer a fork, and Pepper didn't ask for one. Instead, she ripped off a bite with her fingers, unselfconscious.

Maya wanted to fuck her. She wanted to set the plate aside and lick Pepper's fingers clean, strip that shirt off her button by button and pin her down into the bed by her shoulders. Pepper has freckles all over, freckles like constellations, like Aldrich's brain universe. Maya wanted to map those. She wanted to trace Ursa Major with her tongue and maybe the path of Thor's shattered Bifrost down her navel. She wanted to be that stargazer and that ego-less explorer, that nubile and newborn scientist with no motivation but the want for knowledge.

She wanted to know how Pepper tasted. How she let her pubic hair grow to curl between her legs, or how she trimmed it, or how she shaved it entirely. She wanted to know the firmness of Pepper's thighs when they flexed. If Pepper shook before she came. If she had scars.

Extremis was meant to fix things, but looking at Pepper, right there, silent and eating from Maya's plate in Maya's hands, Maya knew there was nothing to fix.

***

Maya Hansen has a girlfriend.

Jaz won't know what happened to her. She thinks Maya is in Istanbul, presenting her research at a string of conferences. She thinks Maya is on a university-sanctioned business trip. She thinks Maya is wonderful. She does not know that Maya is working for a terrorist. A terrorist who created a terrorist to play on that extreme American racism, that xenophobia. Maya works for the real monster, and Jaz will never, ever know what happened.

Maya will simply stop calling.

She will not come home.

Her apartment will be full, and empty. The clock she has hanging in the kitchen, the cat with the swinging tail, will stop eventually, its batteries run out. Her tank of tropical fish will die. Her mail will pile up. There will be messages on her voicemail. Telemarketers, mostly. Jaz, too. Jaz, asking what she did wrong.

Jaz, asking if they were moving too fast. If meeting the family was too much.

Tony Stark will go home, and he will keep Pepper as happy as he possibly can. He will cut out his own heart, or maybe he will cut out that thing that sits between his ribs, keeping him alive. He will cut it out, and he will love Pepper Potts, who will be there. She will be there because Maya knows Tony will break out of those ties, that he will save Pepper, and that Pepper will do what she does best: everything.

It's better this way.

One of Maya's lungs has stopped cooperating.

It's better this way because Jaz will never know that Maya was working for a terrorist. Jaz will remember Maya wide-eyed, gasping up at her when Jaz pressed a vibrator between her legs and let the nub of it press hard to her clit. Jaz will remember Maya passed out on the living room floor, half-drunk cups of coffee with early-stage Extremis blueprints spread around her.

Gradually, these memories will fade.

Jaz will wake up, one day, and she won't miss Maya. She will go to work. Maybe she'll still work at the corner store on 39th Street, or maybe she'll get that reporting job she wanted. She'll get another cat. She'll get a boyfriend. She'll move out of her apartment, and she'll be okay.

But first, she will not go to Maya's funeral.

She will never know.

She will spend six months waiting.

***

Maya Hansen had a girlfriend. 


End file.
